Fancy Yourself Creative?

Me too. I have some bad news for us.

I recently read an article on the creative process. Until I read this article, I thought creativity was a good thing, but it appears there is a very fine line between Bren-the-imaginative-eccentric and Bren-the-flat-out-fruitcake.

Behavior is determined by a combination of sensory input and memory. We take in information, compare it with our previous experience and perform actions based on the results. At any given moment, there is an enormous amount of information coming in over the sensory channels, most of which is unimportant. I doubt the ivy patterned wallpaper in my kitchen, the chirpy bird in the apple tree, the hardness of the chair I’m sitting on, or the smell of my breakfast pizza crusts will in any way improve this essay. Similarly, the bulk of my memories are not useful right now. I don’t have to know where I put the snow shovel for at least another four months.

To prevent mental overload, nature has provided us with latent inhibition - the ability to filter out familiar input and unimportant memories and concentrate on behavior appropriate to the current situation. This has incredible survival value. When I encounter a large, hairy animal in the back yard, I want to do a quick flick through the zoological database in my brain, not feel the grass between my toes and remember that night I got drunk in Algiers.

Scientists have made a correlation between cognitive disinhibition, a reduced ability to filter out the unimportant, and creativity, theorizing that it’s the off-the-wall recombination of input which occasionally produces new ideas. E=MC², Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Star Wars, all fabulous results of cognitive disinhibition.

However, all this good stuff comes at a price. Reality recedes along with latent inhibition. Schizophrenics also score highly on cognitive disinhibition tests. The more strange spaghetti you throw against your mental walls, the weirder your inner décor gets.  

The other morning I was walking into town for my shift at the library, thinking about the conflict between two characters in the next novel, imagining their dialogue.

He: Paranormal stuff is bullshit.

She: Fine. Come up with an explanation you like better.

 He: You’re involved in this somehow. Revenge?

 She: Well of course. That makes so much more sense. I burned down a clinic in Mexico and murdered four innocent women to pay back a twenty year old grudge against a woman with a brain tumor.

A bevy of older women who were power-walking toward me stopped suddenly, then scurried across the street. Apparently, if I throw enough spaghetti at my mental wall, my charming little habit of talking to myself when I’m alone devolves into a public argument with my other head.

Given the precarious nature of my sanity, I’m now wondering if novelist was a wise choice for a second career.